


All-Natural Care, Locally Sourced

by Siria



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22724569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: In which care packages are given and received. Set after 5.11.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 46
Kudos: 243





	All-Natural Care, Locally Sourced

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [sheafrotherdon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon) and [trinityofone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trinityofone) for letting me write this at them over IM.

His mom and dad might not have been the best with putting their feelings into words, but they were pretty good at putting them into care packages. Less than a week after his birthday, Patrick found himself signing for a box so big that it barely fit through his apartment’s door.

“I thought this was just a thing people did in movies?” David asked while Patrick hunted in one of the kitchen drawers for a box cutter. “I mean, technically Alexis sent me a care package once, but that was actually several high carat rubies she managed to get out in a diplomatic pouch before the Russian government closed the border.”

Dating David Rose had really been a master class in learning which conversational strands to pursue, and which to back away from.

“It’s just a care package, David,” Patrick said, opening the box. “It’s a very nice thought, but no international laws were broken.” His mom had put in the clothes he’d asked for, the ones he hadn’t had room for in his suitcase when he’d first moved out here, though he knew his dad had to be responsible for the brand-new Blue Jays t-shirt. There were several packages of tea and two large tins of cookies, one of which had a post-it note stuck on top. _For David_ , it read in his mom’s neat print.

“Oh my god,” David said, prying the tin open and staring inside with wide eyes. “Chocolate chip! How did she know they’re my favourite?”

“Because chocolate chip is everyone’s favourite,” Patrick said, trying to steal one and getting a smack on the back of his hand instead. “You’re not exactly a member of the cookie elite.”

“Uh, speak for yourself? And this is _my_ share of the communal care package,” David said, wrapping his arms around the tin. “Go have your own.”

Patrick set the second tin carefully up on the kitchen countertop to explore later, because his mom’s cookies really were pretty delicious.

Beneath the top layer, wrapped in tissue paper, was something that made his breath catch. It was the quilt his grandma had made for him a few years before she’d passed, a glory of prairie colours and careful stitching. Patrick hadn’t much appreciated it at the time, but now it reminded him of just how much he missed her. He unfolded the quilt, smoothing out a few wrinkles and clearing his throat, before refolding it carefully and carrying it over to place on a shelf in his bedroom. Plenty of time later to decide how best to keep it safe.

When he turned back toward the kitchen, he found that David’s torso had all but vanished inside of the box.

“Hey,” Patrick said, “what happened to respecting our shares of the communal care package?”

“Ha,” David said, re-appearing with a triumphant look on his face: the one that Patrick should have found irritating but that he always just wanted to kiss instead. “Well, any statements made before I realized your mom had included a _photo album_? Are of course rendered null and void.”

Patrick felt his eyes widen. He recognized that red and green cover. “Give me that! David!”

“Nuh uh,” David said, sitting cross-legged on the floor and running his hands over the album the same way some people might stroke a cat. “No. This, I’m going to savour. This is just going to be a bounty of early ‘90s suburban childhood horror, isn’t it? Just wall-to-wall polyester and pastel florals.”

“It’s better to just let you get it all out of your system now, isn’t it?” Patrick asked.

“Oh _my_ god, is that toddler you with a _clipboard_? The curls!” The grin on David’s face bordered on the unholy. “Look at you as a tiny middle manager.”

Patrick sighed and sat down next to him. “Yeah, I’m just going to let you get it all out of your system.”

David had exclaimed his way through a series of Brewer family birthdays, picnics, school plays, Christmases, and trips to the local water park, before something occurred to Patrick. “You know,” he said, nudging David’s knee with his, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a picture of you as a kid.”

David shrugged, turning another page in the album. “There aren’t any, really. I mean, a couple of watercolors my dad commissioned, but who knows where they are now. And I bet you could find old tabloid shots online if you looked?” He tapped a finger against a picture of Patrick, maybe four or five, perched on his dad’s shoulders and beaming. “Nothing like this, though.”

“Your parents didn't have a single photo album stashed away somewhere?” For as long as Patrick could remember, the shelves next to the TV in his parents’ rec room had been full of photos. Old albums jostled for place with the tackiest souvenir frames that Marci Brewer could find in Niagara Falls or Banff National Park, bursting with photos of grandparents and best friends and cousins near and far, great-aunts and uncles who’d died so long ago that Patrick’s only memory of them was really just a memory of a photograph. If there was a major Brewer-Connolly family get-together that had happened without at least one snap-happy aunt present, Patrick couldn’t think of one.

“Oh, there were _photos_ ,” David said. “They were just pretty much all taken during mom’s Anaïs phase, so no thank you.”

“Come again?” Patrick said.

“Well, you know, it was like 1992,” David said with a shrug. “Mom got into a very intense rivalry with Madonna after a slap fight that went down at the unofficial afters of Elton John’s official Oscars After Party? Anyway, she decided she needed her own mononymous alter-ego who did outrageous sexy things very publicly, hence Anaïs. Fun bit of trivia: Anaïs actually had her own credit on _Sunrise Bay_ for seventeen episodes, during the key part of the mermaid con artist storyline.”

“Huh,” Patrick said faintly.

“It’s important to note that pretty much everyone involved was doing a _lot_ of coke at the time,” David said. "Like, just a lot of coke."

“Well, I didn’t want to presume,” Patrick said. “So you mean that—”

“I do mean that,” David said, digging his phone out of one of the many hidden pockets in his sweater-thing. (He had been forbidden from referring to it as a “sweater-thing, because it’s by _Christopher Kane_ , Patrick”, but it existed in too many dimensions at once for Patrick not to think of it, in the privacy of his own head, as the “sweater-thing.”) He tapped at the screen for a moment and then handed the phone over to Patrick. “Here. Just be aware you can never un-see this, okay?”

Patrick stared down at the screen in growing horror. “Well,” he said after a long pause. “When you’re right, you’re right. Did they really—”

“Yeah,” David said, taking the phone back and closing out of the browser app with a delicate shudder. “They tried to get Annie Leibovitz to take it because she did the original one, but they got her name mixed up because—”

“Lots of coke?”

“Basically,” David said. “So they accidentally ended up asking Anne Geddes to do it instead—”

Patrick blinked. “The baby photo woman?”

“Yup.”

Patrick blinked again. “To take a photo of your dad naked and curled around your mom while she was dressed like a dominatrix version of Yoko Ono?”

“By all accounts, it was a confusing and traumatic meeting for everyone involved, so.”

“Well, that picture is confusing and traumatic for me right now, so chalk one up to the lasting impact of art,” Patrick said. He did some math and worked out how old David would have been in 1992, and carefully repressed a wince. “I’m guessing middle school wasn’t a lot of fun for you.”

“They had a _very_ enlarged copy placed in the foyer of our Toronto house,” David said. His fingers drummed in a staccato rhythm against his phone case. “Without telling me, right before I brought some friends over after school, and two days before _Town and Country_ showed up to do a photo shoot ‘at home with the Roses’ and that”—he waggled the phone at Patrick—“is how _this_ eventually ended up all over Google.”

Patrick thought about that for a moment, then hauled himself to his feet. “It’s ten in the morning, so it’s too early for alcohol, but how about I put the kettle on for some tea? Some very strongly brewed tea?”

“You could put alcohol _in_ the tea, I absolutely endorse that idea.”

“Nope,” Patrick said, stooping to press a kiss to the crown of David’s head. “Earl Grey coming right up.”

While Patrick pottered around the kitchen area, David picked up the album and moved over to the sofa, looking through the rest of the pages and occasionally asking questions about particular photos: were all of these kids Patrick’s cousins? what was the cute dog’s name? who had told Patrick’s mom that a perm was a good idea?

“Glad to see that the Anaïs phase didn’t turn you off photos for life,” Patrick said, setting the tray down on the coffee table. He’d put the tea in the two fanciest mugs he owned, and a chocolate chip cookie apiece on a plate, because he was skilled in the ways of David Rose wrangling.

David huffed and accepted his mug from Patrick. “Please, you think _that_ was the most outré photo I’ve ever encountered? Remember, I spent the best part of a decade curating a series of disruptive and dare I say paradigm-shifting exhibitions at boutique galleries in Brooklyn, Zürich, and Tokyo. I once helped display a series of polaroids in which renowned puppet muse and performance _artiste_ Szigismund sat naked in a claw-foot tub, immersed in the yolks of several dozen broken eggs while trying to imbibe their essence through his sphincter. Compared to that, the sight of my dad’s butt cheek is pretty mild, I think.”

“That’s a lot of eggs,” Patrick said mildly and took a sip of his tea.

David patted him on his arm. “Uh huh, okay, well they were actually a key part of a searing commentary on the very concept of western civilization as a historic and homogenizing entity, so.”

“ _Were_ they, though?” Patrick asked.

  


*****

  


Monday was the one day of the week the store didn’t open, so they spent the rest of the morning on the couch: David reading a library book and Patrick on his laptop working on some invoices. David’s book was a terrible murder mystery of what Patrick thought of as the Downton Abbey kind: lots of corsets and country houses and Victorians and colonels wielding daggers in the billiard room. Not something he’d ever pick up himself, but he was reluctantly charmed by the way that David would occasionally cackle and read out some bad banter in an even worse English accent. 

Patrick was charmed, too, by the way that David drowsed off partway through a chapter, his head nodding to rest on Patrick’s shoulder. He waited until he was certain that David was out—because not even an earthquake could wake up a napping David—then switched from Excel to his messaging app.

 _Patrick (11:14):_ i need some help. want to do a deep dive into google images and/or facebook for a project D. will be really irritated about loving?  
_Alexis (11:16):_ omg yes  
_Alexis (11:16):_ just as long as it doesn’t mean i’ve got to work with anything hosted on a server located in a chinese special economic zone  
_Alexis (11:18):_ there may be like a teensy court order still in place  
_Alexis (11:18):_ but it’s like not even a felony so no need to worry

This was followed by a series of emojis that Patrick didn't understand—although pandas and the flag of Madagascar featured prominently—and then, after he explained what he wanted, a steady stream of photos. 

Alexis showed him David as a teenager in a class photo, his red-streaked hair flopping into his eyes while he flipped off the photographer; as a curly-headed toddler peering shyly out from behind a woman's leg in a grainy magazine scan; at seven or so running across what looked like the _Sunrise Bay_ set, gap-toothed and grinning at someone off camera. Scrolling through the photos, Patrick felt that same shock of recognition he had the first time he'd ever met David, back at Ray's: _I've never seen you before, but I know you_.

  


*****

  


There was a print shop in Elmdale, and a store a couple of blocks away that sold the kind of expensive, glossy albums Patrick thought David would like. He picked one with thick, creamy pages and a dark grey cover, and then spent an hour in the corner of a Starbucks, pasting in dozens of pictures and swearing under his breath at the glue stick. When he was done, the album didn't look like something professionally made—but it did look like something Patrick had made for David. He smiled. 

Back home, Patrick wrapped the album in tissue paper, tied it up with some David Rose-approved string from the store, and left it strategically positioned on the pillow on David's side of the bed. Then it was just a matter of sitting on the couch, catching up on some TV shows and folding laundry and waiting for David to let himself in and potter around and drink a glass of water and tell Patrick about his day and then finally, finally, notice what's on the bed.

"So this is new." Patrick looked over to see David clutching the package against his chest, fingers splayed wide against it as if he was afraid someone would snatch it away from him. "Is it, um..."

"It's a care package," Patrick said, fighting back a last-minute fit of nerves. "For you. A small-scale one curated by some locals and presented in a one-stop home environment that benefits both giver and giftee."

"Okay, I see what you're doing there? And I want you to know this whole thing is smug and off-putting." Even as David spoke, he sat down on the sofa next to Patrick and started to unwrap the package, slowly unpicking the twine knot and then peeling back each individual layer of tissue paper. 

Patrick hadn't used all of the pictures Alexis had sent him; some were so low-quality they wouldn't have printed well, while others were clearly tabloid snaps from moments in David's life that no kind of tinted glasses could turn rosy. Now, watching David open the album to the first page, he desperately hoped he'd picked the right ones.

"Um, okay," David said very softly. He touched the page hesitantly, the barest glance of his fingertips against paper. In the middle of the page was a black-and-white photo of a baby David in his grandmother's arms, a cutting from the newspaper of the small town that Mrs Rose was so determined to pretend she'd never come from.

David turned the pages, working his way through spread after spread of pictures of him from two to twenty-one, and Patrick heard his breath catch and release, a long, slow exhale. 

"I'm not..." Patrick started, then began again. "I'm not saying you've got to pretend anything about the past. I just think you've always been a person worth knowing."

"But, no, I'm—"

"Sweetheart." Patrick leaned in and kissed David on the cheek. "You are."

David gestured at one of the photos. "That's not even my good side, so—"

"David." Patrick waited until David turned to look at him. His eyes were red-rimmed and his mouth was all twisted up in that way he thought hid what he felt and Patrick loved him, god, so much. "It's a care package. I care about you."

They'd been together for months and months now, but still every time they kissed Patrick felt that little inner jolt, like a circuit being completed: David's big hands on his face, the solid heft of his thighs beneath Patrick's hands. Patrick didn't know if it would ever stop feeling like this, like David was the best gift he'd never known to ask for.

"Okay," David said, pulling back a little, "it's just that I couldn't help but notice that half of the pages are blank, like you couldn't even find enough—"

"David," Patrick said, tugging the album out of David's hands and setting it on the coffee table, "that was deliberate. That's space for pictures we take together."

"Oh," David said. 

"That," Patrick said, wrapping his arms around David, "is what we call a gesture." 

"Oh my god," David said, sounding aggrieved and on the verge of laughter all at once. 

"You know," Patrick said, deadpan. " _Romance_."

"Okay, okay, I get it!" David said. From the smile on his face, Patrick thought maybe he did.

**Author's Note:**

> The photo that Johnny and Moira recreated is the [famous one](https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-annie-leibovitz-perfectly-captured-yoko-johns-relationship) which Annie Leibovitz took of Yoko Ono and John Lennon shortly before he died. Anne Geddes specialises in very cutesy baby photos. Believe it or not, David’s performance art friend was actually referencing something from medieval history: a physician writing a manual around 1300 [advised that](https://books.google.com/books?id=ZfpeAQAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&lpg=PA310&dq=if%20someone%20is%20too%20weakened%20and%20exhausted%20by%20immoderate%20coitus%2C%20let%20him%20sit%20naked%20in%20a%20clean%20tub%20in%20which%20thirty%20or%20forty%20eggs%20have%20been%20broken%2C%20and%20draw%20all%20these%20eggs%20in%20through%20the%20anus&pg=PA310#v=onepage&q&f=false) “if someone is too weakened and exhausted by immoderate coitus, let him sit naked in a clean tub in which thirty or forty eggs have been broken, and draw all these eggs in through the anus.” Please don’t try this at home.


End file.
